The invention generally concerns tactical gear, but specifically a belt buckle for police, military or tactical personnel, the belt buckle being of low profile (width) so as to minimize the length of belt span which it occupies.
Belt buckles have been provided in a variety of forms. Police and tactical personnel normally wear a heavy, somewhat wide belt on which may be carried one or more weapons, ammunition, communication gear or other equipment. The typical belt buckle is fairly heavy duty and can occupy a considerable amount of space in the circumference of the belt span, especially at front, limiting space for equipment carried on the belt. An objective of the current invention is to minimize the lateral width of belt span occupied by a belt buckle while providing a strong, heavy duty buckle that is also aesthetically attractive.
The prior art contains several buckles or clasps relevant to the present invention. These include U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,480,967, 2,956,324 and 4,054,972. The first of these shows a conventional belt buckle with a typical prong to engage through a selected hole in an end portion of a belt, but with a mechanism to remove the terminal, active part of the belt buckle from a separately formed base end, with a slide-apart motion. A male cylinder component slides into a female cylindrical slot, with a ball and detent provided to hold these components together. The buckle is not of low profile in the lateral direction, and the slide-apart feature is not used to engage and release the belt from the person's waist, but rather to remove the operative buckle component from the base part of the buckle.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,956,324 noted above describes a buckle with cylindrical slide-together parts configured on a slant, the assembly not being one of low profile. U.S. Pat. No. 4,054,972 shows a typical brassiere clamp that involves sliding the components together vertically in the typical manner.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,282,634 and 5,447,092 describe belt buckles with typical male/female components configured to plunge together in the axial (belt-tightening) direction of the belt, engaged by plastic spring tabs that snap into place.